Anne has done it again! She has designed yet another piece that just makes me twinge with need to knit it! I don’t really have the time or need to knit a lacy nothing right now, I need a warm something as the chill of winter pervades my every bone. Yet Alhambra (the rusty red one) calls to me, in a soft ghostly whisper “Brooooooooooooooklynne knit me please! *whimper* Brooklynne save meee from the torment of not being knit! Brooklynne, Broooooooklyne Broooooooooooooooooklynne” It’s maddening! Anne how do you do it? How do you make such compelling items to knit? How many of your patterns do I own? More than I would like to think about!

So instead I have been reading, mostly these books, which are a trilogy, by one of my favorite Science Fiction authors. Melissa Scott writes some of the most intense interesting science fiction I have ever encountered. Her work is often very thought provoking and often challenges your mind to open up more and more. She creates dystopian worlds that are amazingly intricate and complex but doesn’t bombard you with inane details, she doesn’t describe bright blue suns with green skies that go on and one for pages. She tells you what you need to know to understand the story and nothing more beyond that. Which is wonderful because it allows your brain to fill in the gaps if you feel the need to.

I’m not very science minded so one of the things that i like about all of he books is that new sciences that she has created are always explained in a way that I can understand them. By this I don’t mean they are simple explanations, but straight forward and yet again telling you only the important stuff as you need to know it. An example I can specifically think of is in one of her books people connect to the internet by interfacing through cables that plug into your head and then you are in the “net” much like virtual reality. Well when she explains this in the internet she doesn’t go into great detail about how the wires are connected to your brain or how things interface etc. which I often feel are really just unimportant details that often cause my eyes to gloss over. Another great feature of the way she write about technology is that she doesn’t go on and on for pages about the technology for no reason at all, and never just to show off that she’s smarter than you ,like I feel many Sci-Fi authors do. The phrase that I say over and over that I think is really the great part of her books is that you get told what you need to know when you need to know it, and not a moment sooner!

But oh the plots, the plots are what really make her books ace! With worlds and scenarios that are up there with Margaret Atwood but taken to places Margaret is to conservative to go. The plots are intense and twisted often without a clear villain, but more a group of people that are more problematic the pure evil. I hate that in many Sci-Fi books they are these epic adventures with huge goals the crush massive evil, in a way that when the book ends you don’t really care about what happens afterwards to the characters. Melissa’s books aren’t like that, they are fantastic journeys with people on regular events in their lives, sometimes you are 200 pages into the book before you find out what the main event is supposed to be. Some authors this would make the begin drag and the end seem rushed, but Melissa does it in such a way that it mirrors life and is believable. Where some books a riot that is important to the books would happen in the beginning and the novel would focus on those fights happening, Melissa teasingly holds the riot till the last chapter, letting the tension build even within you, really exemplifying the feelings of the people. She draws great complexities within those tensions and shows you the softer side of the “villain” shows’ you the fears he’s reacting on, the fears that make him become the “bad guy” in such a way that you can’t help pity him. She draws this out in glimpses of several peoples perspectives so you don’t feel like life is dragging on, but more so that when that first brick flies, or that first shot is made you want to do the same and join them.

When you come to the last page everything isn’t tied up in a pretty little bow for you. It’s raw It’s imperfect, there are things that have been certain characters goals from the first page you met them that have not been achieved. Sexual tensions between other characters that your sure are going to end up together never end up together. the ending are so rough, tense, and emotional that I often find myself crying. The thing that sticks out the most for many of Melissa’s books is that the ending rings true to life, reminds you that this isn’t the end but just where you have to stop watching. Even though that having to stop often makes your heart ache that in itself reminds you how well written these books are.

I was going to go into a review of these books but i have a feeling that should wait for another time seeing how long this post has gotten so far! So I guess instead I leave you with this picture of yarny goodness that I will talk about in a post to come! If you want to check out any or Melissa’s books I encourage you to do so at amazon.com, I deffinatly recommend the Silence Leigh Trilogy(Five Twelfths of Heaven, Silence in Solitude, and The Empress of Earth), Shadow Man, Night Sky Mine, and The Shape Of Their Hearts(this one isn’t perfect but really gets you thinking!)

So go have a read and tell me what you think!

P.S. There is alsoa crazy pastor by the same name… :-p i find that just hilarious!